After Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was sworn in, the satire show Eretz Nehederet staged a spoof interview with his wife, Gilat.
“Gilat” baked a real cake, spoke about how important it was for all her children to work, and said she had to end the interview because she was going to go clean the home of an Ethiopian immigrant. In short, she was the anti-Sara Netanyahu.
When Bennett gave interviews to the three prime time TV channels on Tuesday, it was as if he had studied that spoof interview and decided to do the same with Sara’s husband.
In almost every answer, it was clear that Bennett’s main goal was differentiating himself from the former prime minister.
He spoke about a different leadership for a new generation, and kept saying he would make decisions without taking into account political considerations and without drama. He spoke about healing relations with Egypt and Jordan; and he even looked believable when he said he would honor his rotation agreement in the Prime Minister’s Office with Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
Bennett made a point of speaking to the networks in that office, unlike Netanyahu, who always interviewed at the much-maligned official residence of the prime minister on Jerusalem’s Balfour Street. He said he would never stay more than three nights a week in that residence, and his family would never move there.
“When you enter this room, you have to come clean and leave politics behind,” he said.
He made a point of barely mentioning Netanyahu by name, but kept saying that his ministers had inherited a challenging situation from their predecessors.
“Politics doesn’t interest me,” he said on all three channels, when asked if he would take the Arab Ra’am Party leaving his coalition into account when deciding whether to go to war.
And, indeed, staying away from politics is what polls show the people of Israel want, as Bennett approaches his 100th day as prime minister on Tuesday.
“Our appointments will be professional, not political,” he said, when talking about the fate of Israel Prison Service Commissioner Katy Perry in the wake of last week’s jailbreak.
Bennett kept saying his government would take action, rather than merely talking on key issues, especially Iran, and efforts to bring back the citizens and the bodies of IDF soldiers held by Hamas. He said some things are better for him to not even speak about.
He also differentiated himself by what he did not talk about. Throughout his more than three decades in politics, Netanyahu has made a point of ignoring questions asked by reporters and changing the subject to Iran. Bennett enabled the interviews to be about everything but Iran.
But in the little time he spent on Iran, he said the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program had crossed Netanyahu’s famous redline long ago, meaning when Netanyahu was in office, not now.
Time will tell whether Bennett will keep his “anti-Bibi” act going. He did not bring Gilat and his kids to the White House as Netanyahu did. Now the prime minister has another US visit coming up, to the UN General Assembly in New York in two weeks.
Bennett met his wife when they were starting their professional careers in New York. Coming back as prime minister would close a circle, but it would also ruin his act. Leaving Gilat at home in Israel again and not having her clap from the gallery, like Sara Netanyahu always did for her husband, would go a long way to prove that there really is a new kind of prime minister in Jerusalem.